By Burnett W. “Kwadwo” Gallman, Jr. M.D.
COMMENTARY
On July 4, 2026, the United States will celebrate 250 years of existence. Many different ethnic groups and races will participate in this celebration. I’d wager that some Native Americans would join in the celebration even though they have been subjected to overt genocide in so many ways.
From the early nineteenth century into the early twentieth century Native American children were forcibly and legally removed from their homes and families and placed with white families or in boarding schools that forced them to forget who they were. They were made to act white and assimilate into whiteness. They were punished if caught speaking their languages or expressing any traditional or cultural thing that was uniquely “Indian”. These “Indian Boarding Schools” were known to treat these children savagely and even today, archeologists and anthropologists are discovering unmarked graves on these campuses trying to identify the children buried there.
Actually, the Native or Indigenous people have an earlier gripe. The so-called first Thanksgiving was actually a massacre. After teaching the newcomers (or settler colonists) from Europe how to survive (because the Native Americans’culture, like those of Afrika, was welcoming to strangers), these savage, narcissistic and psychopathic newcomers from Europe repaid the kindness with treachery resulting ultimately in genocide.
This was followed by the gradual removal of Native Americans from their Ancestral homes. Many treaties and guarantees were given but the United States frequently broke those treaties.
Now let us look at the celebration of the United States’ 250 years by people of Afrikan origin. Firstly, as these Europeans arrived (they called it “discovered”) in the so-called “New World” (new to who?), they discounted the people who were already here (“discovering America”, etc.). They also mentioned in their records finding people in the Americas who were obviously Afrikan, from their descriptions. So, the Afrikans who were already here were written out of history.
These wealthy European narcissistic psychopaths were too ignorant and too lazy to do their own work so they imported poverty stricken and criminal Europeans under a system of indentured servitude. Mind you, they were enslaving Native Americans and trafficking kidnapped Afrikans for slavery all this time.
During this “peculiar institution” of slavery, the inhuman atrocities were frequent and awful. Torture, rape, beatings, amputations of limbs, separation of families were commonplace and legal. Even those who claimed to be “kind masters” were terrible human beings because they took away the freedom of the Afrikans that they held in bondage and attempted to destroy their humanity. And…the threat of violence was always present.
Other, less discussed violent acts against us were the lies they told about us in trying to justify their barbarity. They created pseudosciences such as craniometry, phrenology and eugenics that classified Afrikans as either subhuman or lower level humans. This led to the widespread belief that enslaving us was beneficial to Afrikans. In doing this they had to hide the fact that at the beginning of the “slave trade’ there were many Afrikan kingdoms that were far more advanced than Europe at the same time, such as Ghana, Mali, Zimbabwe, and Songhai (to name a few). This history had to be hidden and ignored.
Another lie, propagated by the Daughters of the Confederacy was that slavery wasn’t so bad and the Civil War was started by the north (forget South Carolina firing on Fort Sumter and then treasonously seceding from the United States). Their claim that the Civil War wasn’t caused by slavery can be disproved by just reading the Articles of Secession of South Carolina and Mississippi.
When the indentured European servants and the enslaved Afrikans united and almost defeated the wealthy “string-pullers” in Bacon’s rebellion, it was decided to create whiteness as good, pure, intelligent and superior while Blackness was defined as bad, dirty dumb and inferior. Because whiteness elevated the poor Euro-Americans, they gleefully and readily accepted the elevation to whiteness. And so it started.
Between 1877 and 1968, many more than 4,400 Black men, women and children were lynched (I say many more because many were unreported or the deaths were claimed to be from other causes). At least 34 of these were mass lynchings (multiple people lynched at the same time, usually as a public spectacle).
There were at least dozens of race massacres targeting AUSA communities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that killed thousands of AUSA men, women and children. The Tulsa, Oklahoma “Black Wall Street” Massacre and the Rosewood, Florida Massacre are the best known but they are only the tip of the Iceberg. At least five occurred in South Carolina: The Hamburg Massacre (1876), The Ellenton Massacre (1876), The Charleston Massacre (1919), The Orangeburg Massacre (1968), and The Charleston Church Massacre (2015).
Redlining, that prevented AUSA from obtaining mortgages, loans and insurance and confined us to decaying neighborhoods was nothing to celebrate.
Even though we are currently officially citizens (based on the 14th Amendment), we have lived in terror for most of the time that we have been in this country. And…the attacks on the 14th Amendment by racist whit nationalists are increasing. It is not far-fetched to think that they want to re-define our citizenship.
That constant terror has affected our health so that we AUSA lead the country in negative health statistics (frequently called racial health disparities).
The United States has directly or indirectly been involved in the overthrow or assassinations of leaders of many other countries. Examples are Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Sukarno in Indonesia, Salvadore Allende in Chile, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana to name a few.
Many people say that slavery was America’s original sin. I would say that slavery was one of America’s many sins. The genocide of the Native people of the Americas and the Caribbean was Americas original sin.
Many people chant “Make America Great Again”. I would ask, when was America great? During the era of slavery when people of Afrika origin were enslaved or treated badly even if they were not enslaved? Was America great during Jim Crow segregation?
My answer, obviously is no but these make America great people do want to at least reinstate Jim Crow segregation and possibly even slavery.
For at least 229 years of that 250 years, America has been at war. That is 93% of its existence. These wars cost more than 1.3 million lives and more than $11.7 trillion. So much for claims that America wants pea e in the world.
So, back to the original question: 250 years of what? Another question is why do so many people in the world either fear or hate America? This country has wreaked havoc on the world and is currently once again demonstrating the true definition of a bully.
This is my country and in order to love it, I must be honest. I have seen and experienced things that most non-Black Americans of European origin wouldn’t believe or accept for themselves. America has to look realistically and honestly at the damage that this country has done over the course of 250 years, not only to Afrikan people but to the world. Then America should be mature enough to admit it’s mistakes, make amends and pay reparations, even though anything that is done now will not truly mend or repair the damage done. At any rate, the effort must be made.
Food for thought.